UPDATE (AB) (7/16 AM Pacific): Images hosted on Brickshelf seem to be working again. What this means I don’t know. More info as we find out.
UPDATE (LB) (7/16 AM Pacific): Keith Goldman pointed out that MOCpages is now offering free hosting for lego images. A note on the front page states that this service may not be free in the future – I suspect it depends on how much it will cost to keep such a service up and running. The old galleries don’t work since they simply linked to the pictures on Brickshelf before this transition, but it’s still a very kind gesture by Sean Kenney, owner of the site.
UPDATE (NW) (7/15 10:50 PM Pacific): Troy Cefaratti has released similar posts on Classic-Castle.com as well. Take a deep breath guys, not all is lost. Remember, it’s only been less than 24 hours. Give it time.
UPDATE (AB) (7/15 3:30 PM): Troy Cefaratti (aka “Mnementh” on BrickLink and Classic-Castle) seems to know something we don’t.
(And my apologies to those of you got a page not found error when you clicked through from somewhere else today. I updated the timstamp and title for this post, and that seems to have changed its Web address. My bad.)
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Whether you host your own images there or not, Brickshelf is one of the cornerstones of the online LEGO community. As many of you visiting this blog will have noticed, none of the images hosted on Brickshelf are currently working, and if you’ve been to Brickshelf.com in the last few hours, you will have seen the following text — and nothing else — on the home page:
“Brickshelf has discontinued operation. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
I’m furiously reading discussion threads, e-mailing, and chatting with my sources, but I don’t have any information about this issue right now. Unfortunately, given the wording of the message, this doesn’t seem to be “scheduled maintenance”.
Discussions are popping up on LEGO forums all over the Internet:
- LUGNET
- Classic-Castle: Thread 1 (locked), Thread 2 (now also locked) Additional threads, most of them also locked because of needless panic and namecalling, can be found.
- Classic-Space
- Eurobricks: Thread 1, Thread 2
- FBTB Forums
- Bricklink Forums: Thread 1, Thread 2
- Forum 0937
- Brickfilms.com
- Transformer World 2005
- Minifig Customization Network
- Saber Scorpion’s Lair Forums
Blog reactions:
- Brickley’s Words
- VignetteBricks and MicroBricks
- Klocki
- How Many Studs to LEGOLAND
- Paganomation Blog
- Biczzz
- The NXT STEP
- LEGO-BINGO
- Moyblik
- THE BRICK TIME
- Masoko Tanga
- Fascinating Lego Model of the Day
- Brick Town Talk
- Bill Ward’s Brickpile
- LegOficina dos Baixinhos
- Lego Brasil
- Bricktacular!
- rayhawk
- Tim Courtney
- Brick Star
- BrickJournal Journal
- Legoゲージ推進機構日報〜レゴトレイン・ブログ
Despite the magic of RSS, I won’t be able to monitor the entire online LEGO community for updates about this, so if you learn something definitive, please leave a comment on this post (I’ll see it in my e-mail) or use the Contact Us page to send a private message.
EDIT: (NW) Added discussion topic link to Brickfilms.com. Also, Ecto pointed out in the comments section that https://www.brickshelf.com/ works. Remember to put the ‘s’ after ‘http’. I urge everyone who doesn’t have a backup of their stuff to back it up now, and not upload anything new. It’s not known how long this version will last.
EDIT: (AB) And now the SSL (https) site isn’t working either. Still no word from Brickshelf management as to what’s going on.